The best is when they have a large portion of the store dedicated to selling things that cannot be bought without an employee helping. At a walmart I worked at when I was younger there were two aisles of paint to be used in mixing but we never had anyone on the floor capable of running the machine since the store opened until I left two years later. There was also the electronics section which had everything under lock and key and had an employee with the key available maybe a third of the time.
I also saw the deli open frequently with no one manning it. It wasn't closed, just had no one to run the machines
When the Fry's Electronics in Indiana opened years ago, they staffed one person per aisle, and even put a polaroid picture of them on the end of the aisle (in case you couldn't pick out the person in a white shirt and black pants). I don't think that staffing model lasted a year for them here, and having never been to a West Coast Fry's, I don't know if it was something they attempted here or the norm. But, in the case of other retailers (one of whom I work for), it is definitely not the norm in the US market, and is usually more like one or two per department, not aisle.
Back in the 90's and early 2000's this was a hugely successful model, its the period during which Fry's had its greatest expansion. On any given day of the week you could see a line of 30+ people waiting for a spot at one of 15+ registers.
More recently many Fry's seem to have become ghost towns - even the banks of registers seemed to have thinned out, likely due to an expectation of never seeing that volume of customers again. The most probable explanation? Amazon. It's all the same cheap electronics.
My Fry's opened in the empty shell of a former Incredible Universe, and had 60 register bank on opening day (as Incredible Universe did). Even in the heyday, I don't remember all of the registers open, and also have seen them since thin down from 60 to maybe 30, and even then there are only 5 or 6 open at a time, even on the weekend. I agree Amazon is killing Fry's, and every time I go and try to support something non-Amazon, I'm filled with regret at the state of the store, and usually just place an Amazon order while frustratedly walking out empty handed.
Not at all. There might be 3 people on the floor, in a huge Super Target which is between 135k and 175k square feet. That is between 12 500 and 16 000 square meters.
Of course that is what all the newly redundant staff will be doing. Because customer service is the top priority of a discount retailer.